Bevboy's Blog!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Post 1082 – Whiskey in the Jar

I really should be transcribing the NB interview tonight before the Jack Bauer show starts at the top of the hour, 17 minutes or so from now. But I have been thinking about a late 1990’s Metallica song, “Whiskey in the Jar”. The lyrics are so strange for a metal band’s, that I knew that there had to be a lot more to it.

This song is hundreds of years old!

It goes back to the 1600’s and was and is a very famous Irish drinking song, because, let’s face it, there aren’t any Irish sitting-around-watching-tv songs. Very well known in early Colonial America, it was, around 1973, recorded by Thin Lizzy. 25 years later, Metallica did an album of cover songs and won a Grammy for it.

I thought I’d include a few videos for you to prove my assertions and justify my research. Here’s a traditional version by The Dubliners.

Here’s Thin Lizzy’s rendition, which is smokin’ cool. I had forgotten how much I liked these guys.

And, here’s an unauthorized copy Metallica’s version. The official version of the video is one I cannot embed here, but I found this one, which shows the very strange (to modern ears) lyrics.